


stars have risen through your skies

by romans



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Body Horror, Child Death, M/M, PTSD, Suicidal Ideation, Torture, Waterboarding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 21:42:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2597414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I said to myself, "I bet you can't write ten thousand words of Bucky Barnes taking a bath."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Artwork by midnightbluemoose is [here on tumblr](http://midnightbluemoose.tumblr.com/post/102280360770). Part of the [Steve/Bucky Big Bang 2014](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/stevebuckybigbang2014).

  
_It was a brilliant cure but we lost the patient._ \- Ernest Hemingway

I.

Steve drops to his knees at Bucky's feet, the nape of his neck bared in the warm light of the bathroom, and starts untangling the knots of Bucky's stolen shoes. Bucky puts his hand onto Steve's head for balance, feels short-cropped hair prickle against his palm. A bead of condensation slides down the back of Steve's neck, but he doesn't seem to notice, fingers tangled in Bucky's laces. He gives the right shoe a tug. 

"Foot," he says, and Bucky lifts his foot obediently, lets Steve slide his shoe off. His socks are worn through with holes, and his foot is blistered and dirty underneath the sock. He looks down at his grimy toenails when his foot splays out on the floor. A dollar-store bandage is supporting his swollen ankle where he twisted it- nine days ago, he thinks. Steve glances up at him, head shifting under Bucky's hand, and then goes to work on his left shoe. He gives the laces a sharp tug and they snap like gossamer thread. The shoe is ruined, but Steve probably has plans to burn every garment HYDRA placed on his body. 

Steve eases his other shoe off of his foot, and lets Bucky toe the sock off, sliding his foot against his other ankle. Bucky's left foot isn't much better than his right: the soles of both feet are striped with scars, left by a cane at some point in the past seventy years, and he's broken half the toes in his left foot at least twice, on jaws and doors and bad landings. He wiggles his toes experimentally, cracks his foot. Steve hisses, breath whistling between his clenched teeth, when the top of Bucky's foot crackles. 

Steve smooths his hands over Bucky's bare feet, rubbing them almost reverently, and then turns to check on the progress of the tub. It's halfway full. He dips his hand into the bath, and then cranks up the hot water. 

"Don't have to ration any more," he says, smiling up at Bucky. His smile is a little strained around the edges. He tosses the boots aside and stands up, catching Bucky's hand in his own as it slips off of his head.

The water thunders into the tub, soap frothing around the edges of the bath, and Steve tugs at the collar of Bucky's coat. Bucky shrugs out of it, letting Steve peel it off of his arms and drop it to the floor. His shoulder twinges, but he ignores it. They can fix that later. He starts on his shirt when Steve turns back to the full tub to turn off the water. Bucky’s fingers are clumsy on the little plastic buttons, and he stops to rub at the dirt that feels like it's permanently ingrained under the skin on his palm. His metal hand is untarnished, and the rounded joints of his fingers glint under the bathroom lights.

Steve tugs Bucky’s ragged shirt the rest of the way off and tosses it into the corner with the remains of his shoes, kicking the jacket over to join it. He goes to pull Bucky's undershirt off, but Bucky shakes his head. 

"Wait," he says, placing a quelling hand on Steve's shoulder. Steve freezes, gaze sharpening in a way that tugs at Bucky's gut. He's seen this look on Steve's face before, he thinks. Zola's work hadn't left many marks on his body, not the first time, but that _look_ \- oh, he remembers that. 

The stitches in Bucky's back tug at his skin when he cranes his neck to look at his shoulder. The back of his undershirt is a bloodied mess, and he's pretty sure the skin his right shoulder has dried solidly to the fabric of his shirt. 

"Wait," he says again. Steve catches sight of the mess of Bucky’s shirt in the mirror, the dark blotch of blood and pus on his shoulder blade, and inhales sharply.

"Cut it off," Bucky says. He digs in his pocket, comes up with a switchblade. "You can pull it off if you really want to, but-" 

Steve takes the blade from him, jaw clenched, and rips through the sleeves of his tank top, one at a time. The shirt sags and sticks to his back.

"Wait here," Steve says. He sets the knife down beside the sink, metal clicking against marble, and leaves the bathroom. When he comes back, he's holding a pair of kitchen scissors. The blades glint dully in the muted light of the bathroom, and Steve meets Bucky's eyes briefly before he starts cutting away the shirt. 

_Okay?_

They may have once had a private language, bodies and eyes and quirked brows speaking as fluently as their tongues, but Bucky has forgotten every word of it. He watches Steve's face fill with careful, controlled rage as he makes quick work of the front of the shirt, and turns around without being prompted, so that Steve can work on the back. He can feel the metal against his skin, a whisper of pressure and sharpness tracing along his sides, up his spine. Soon Steve has the shirt cut down to a square of fabric that's stuck to Bucky's right side. 

Bucky stares at the white tiles that line the wall behind Steve’s head, and frowns. 

"What am I gonna find?" Steve asks, head bent at Bucky's shoulder. His breath ruffles Bucky's hair, and his voice is close and intimate. Bucky blinks. 

"Stab wound, stitches, minor burn," Bucky says. He watches Steve's reflection nod in the mirror. 

"This might hurt," Steve says, setting the scissors down. 

Bucky buries a strangled laugh deep in his chest, and braces his hands on the marble of the sink. It stings when Steve starts pulling at the shirt, and there's a brief, sharp stab of pain when the shirt pulls on his stitches, but underneath the pain there's so much relief- from the tightness, from the goddammned itching, that he barely notices when Steve is finished. 

Steve tugs at the skin around the stab wound cautiously, checking on the stitches. The skin around the stitches is a line of red, inflamed and tender when he prods it. He doesn't mention the collage of bruises marbling Bucky's back, but something ugly roils up on his face in the mirror. 

Bucky suddenly wonders when and where Steve learned how to be murderous. He'd been righteous before, and angry as hell, always spoiling for a fight- but Bucky Barnes had always been there to do his dirty work, even at war. He had gotten down on his hands and knees in the mud and killed for Steve, with clear eyes and a cold heart. Steve had never been like that, not that Bucky can recall. 

The man standing behind him has killed hundreds, racked up a huge body count for- what? For what's _right?_

Steve's idea of what's right might be a little skewed, Bucky thinks, looking down at his dirt-encrusted hands where they rest on the sink. There's still blood under his nails, embedded like rust.

"Okay," Steve says, "Pants, before your bath gets cold." 

Bucky turns around obediently, and lets Steve shuck him out of his jeans. Steve's hands are gentle and dispassionate, and he lets Bucky peel his underwear over his hips, kicking them the rest of the way off. Bucky stands naked in the bathroom, feet bare on the cool tile, and supposes he should feel vulnerable and exposed. 

He should. But he doesn't. 

He looks down at himself, at his battered torso and the scar twisting up his right leg, at the dirt that seems to be ground into his skin. His handlers had always hosed him down, after a messy job, but they had only cleaned him superficially, sluiced off the worst of the blood before putting him back under. 

"Let's get you clean," Steve says, moving aside so that Bucky can step into the still-steaming bathwater. 

Bucky watches the water part and close around his left foot with a detached sort of curiosity. He doesn't feel the heat until the water bracelets around his ankle, soaking through his bandage and rising up his leg when he shifts his weight. A shudder goes down his spine at the sensation, but he forces himself to put his right foot into the bath beside his left. Grime rises up, turning the water around his legs faintly gray. He drops down onto his knees, sighing at the heat on his calves, at the warmth that laps against his thighs.

He uncurls his legs and lets himself slide down into the water, resting his arms on the sides of Steve's old claw-footed bathtub. Heat flares in his injured ankle, sharp and painful, so he lifts his foot out of the water to prop it on the rim of the tub. The ache in his back, bone-deep and ever-present, eases minutely as warmth floods through his torso and coils in his belly. Bucky props his metal arm on the side of the tub and lets his eyes slide closed. 

"Bucky?" Steve says.

He's hovering, hands twitching, when Bucky looks up at him. 

Looking up at Steve like this- he's starting to remember, sometimes, and this angle, the look on Steve's face, hovering above him, the hard, smooth rim of the bath pressing against his neck-

He shoves the memory down, fast and hard, before it can coalesce in his mind. The shining pane on the wall above him is a mirror, not an observation window. The tiles on the walls don't stink of industrial disinfectant, there are no needles or saws or- 

Bucky sits up a little, to show himself that he can, and nods. He's fine. 

"Okay," Steve says. He scoops up the sad little bundle of clothing that Bucky had been wearing, and stares at him for a moment. "I'm going to, uh-" he says, clearly wanting to stay. Bucky frowns when another memory comes, unbidden, into his mind, of the two of them sitting in a tub in Baden- or Montenegro- or- it doesn't matter where. Knees pressed together, feet sliding along the bottom of the metal tub, sparse suds slicking the top of the water, Dum-Dum Dugan standing guard - or waiting his turn, maybe- outside of the hastily-erected screen someone had made. 

He had been giving Steve hell for his new body, all the space he took up, had wanted so badly to touch Steve's jaw, to trace the lines of his new body, feel it under his hands. But it hadn't been safe. 

Steve turns to leave, and Zola's lab comes creeping back. Bucky reaches out with one dripping hand and finds Steve's wrist. 

"Didn't we used to share baths?" he asks. Steve blinks at him, clearly nonplussed by the question.

"Sure-" he says. 

"So stay and help me get clean," Bucky says. Steve's eyebrow shoots up, but he tosses the clothes out the door and settles down on his knees beside the tub.

"Wash your back, huh?" Steve says, mouth twisted wryly; it might be humor. It might be suppressed tears. Hard to say. 

Bucky leans back against the tub again, and wiggles his toes in the water. The bandage contracts and itches when he moves, so he reaches down with his metal hand and eases it off of his ankle, dropping it on the floor when it comes free. Bucky flicks the water with his fingers, and then plunges them under the surface, enjoying the rush of warmth on his skin. 

"What first?" Steve asks, arms folded along the edge of the tub. He's watching Bucky contentedly, and the wrinkle in his brow smoothing out a little. 

Bucky picks up the washcloth that's hanging on the side of the tub, soaks it in the bathwater, and runs it over his face. His stubble rasps against the cloth, and the chapped skin of his lips stings at the contact. He scrubs a little, rubbing at the dirt that had tugged at his skin for weeks, and when he pulls the cloth away the white towel is striped with brown and grey. 

"Here," Steve says, taking the towel out of his hand. "You missed a spot." His hands are gentle when he traces along Bucky's temples with the cloth. He stands, briefly, to rinse it out over the sink. His touch is feather-light when he moves the washcloth over to Bucky's jaw, and then to the skin behind his ears. Bucky's mouth quirks at a half-remembered instruction from his mother, a faint sense-memory of her red, work-hardened hands tugging his head back and forth, much rougher than Steve's touch had ever been.

Steve's hand slips down his cheekbone, lingers at the edge of his lips. Bucky feels his mouth curve in a smile. 

"You broke your nose," Steve says, tracing the bridge of Bucky's nose. 

"Guess so," Bucky says. He can't recall it happening, but he knows what the crack of bone sounds like, the shock of pain flaring between his eyes, the taste of blood at the back of his throat, so it must have broken at some point. Maybe more than once.

They might have wired his jaw shut at one point, too, he thinks. The taste of metal rises on the back of his tongue. Maybe he broke it on a mission. Then again, maybe _they_ had. 

He touches his face, fingers mingling with Steve's. He definitely broke his nose more than once, he thinks. It's not worth recalling. He catches Steve's hand, drags his palm down to his mouth, presses something resembling a kiss to Steve's palm. Steve makes a soft sound and pulls his hand away, but a moment later he brushes a thumb over Bucky's brow, smoothing away the furrowed lines there.

"Hair?" Steve says.

Bucky nods and closes his eyes, feels Steve's hand cradle the back of his skull. Steve scoops water over Bucky's head with his other hand, and Bucky flinches at the sensation. 

"Sorry," Steve says. His hand slides under Bucky's shoulder, and Bucky lets Steve ease him down into the foaming bathwater. As soon as the water covers his head he knows it's a mistake. 

_The hand on his shoulder clamps down on the back of his neck and slams his head against the tub, hard enough that something cracks, sharp and loud even under the water. More hands grasp his shoulders and pin him down. Bucky struggles, inhales water, kicks out. The hands let go and he lifts his head to take one gasping breath before the hands close on his neck and shoulders and push him down again. Water forces its way into his mouth, his nose, down his throat._

_Bucky wrenches his shoulders, trying to dislodge the hands, to no avail. He holds his breath, lungs burning, and wonders how long he'll last, if this will be the mission that kills him. His face slams into the bottom of the tub, nose cracking sideways, spilling blood into the water. Time dilates, slows down. Fingers twist in his hair. He takes a breath, chokes, and throws himself backwards._

_There's a wet crack when his attacker goes flying and comes to an abrupt stop against something hard and unyielding. Bucky surges upright, vomits while his lungs burn, and then there's another hand on his shoulder, a needle in his arm_ -

_He goes boneless, facedown in his own bile and vomit._

_"На этот раз девять минут. Великолепно. Но недостаточно. Приведите его в порядок и продолжайте."_

Bucky scrabbles blindly for a hold on Steve's tub and hauls himself upright, splashing half the water from the bath onto the floor. He gasps hungrily for air, willing his lungs to open up and take in oxygen, and blinks tears from his eyes. His hair is plastered to his face, snaking into his mouth and around his neck. 

He stares at Steve for a long moment, unable to comprehend the man in front of him. 

"Buck-" Steve says. His hands flutter nervously above Bucky's shoulders, and Bucky reaches out to grasp Steve's hand in his flesh-and-blood one. He clutches it to his chest, focuses on the warmth of Steve's hand against his skin, on the pulse point under his fingers, on the fingers clenching around his own. Anchoring him. 

He's in Steve's bathroom.

"Bucky! You're safe, hey," Steve says. He squeezes Bucky's fingers. "You're in my apartment, in New York, and you're safe. I'm sorry, I should have- hey- you're with me. I've got you."

Bucky holds on to Steve's hand, lets air filter back into his lungs, feels himself unwind slowly. Warm water ripples around his body. He's not cold, and he has Steve. Steve has him. 

"Do you want to get out of the bath?" Steve asks. 

Bucky blows out a long breath, holds Steve's hand a little harder. 

"Do you want to get out?" Steve asks, again. Bucky drops his hand. He braces his right arm on his left shoulder, drops his head down, and breathes in deep. Slowly, gradually, everything slows down. It's an old habit, something left over from the war, he thinks. He counts his heartbeats, feels himself waiting for the instant between, when his body is still and quiet and he can take aim-

"I want to be clean," Bucky says, "I need to get clean." Before, he hadn't cared if he was clean or dirty, if there had been layers of grime and dirt crusted on and under his clothes, if his hair had been greasy or dry, long or short. If it didn't interfere with his mission, it hadn't mattered. He had barely been aware of it. 

Bucky had washed himself, perfunctorily, in sleazy motel rooms and five-dollar truck stop showers. The dirt and blood ground into his skin is left over from his latest mission, and from shiftless nights spent on the streets, searching for the courage to approach Steve. And now, with Steve kneeling at his side, he feels like he might be able to finally scour out a little of the filth that's accumulated over the years. 

He needs to be _clean_. He needs- 

The rim of the tub creaks under his metal hand, and he takes another shaky breath. 

_Раз, два._

Index finger. Middle finger. Ring finger. _Focus_. 

_Три, четыре, сожми кулак. Хорошо. Проверка моторики завершена._

He flexes his hand, curls and uncurls his fingers, forces down the memories.

Подчинение будет- _no._

No. 

"You're shaking," Steve says. His t-shirt is sticking to his chest, dark with the water that splashed out during Bucky's panic attack, but he doesn't seem to notice. Steve pulls the plug, lets the water rush down the drain.

"We can try again later," Steve says, decisively. He offers Bucky an arm up, clasping wrist-to-wrist, and hauls him out of the tub. Bucky scrubs himself dry with Steve's over-sized, soft towels, drapes one around his waist, and curls up on the couch.

His shoulder is bleeding again, but Steve doesn't seem to mind a few stains on the upholstery. 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

II.

The next morning, Steve watches as Bucky pulls his hair into a loose bun, elastic ringing on the metal joints of his hand, and steps into the bath. Steve, seated on the side of the tub, offers him a supporting arm, which he ignores.

"You want me to leave?" Steve asks, again. 

Bucky gives him a look, and Steve drops his arm, which had been hovering in midair. 

"Fine, I'll stay," Steve says, "I guess you are ninety-six years old. Can't do everything on your own." 

"Something like that," Bucky says, leaning back against the tub carefully. It's only half-full this time, but the water prickles at his sides and steams up Steve's bathroom. He can already feel sweat beading on his forehead. 

Bucky leans forward, letting Steve wipe down his back. He can't recall the last time he let himself enjoy the sensation of just being touched. Steve swipes the cloth over the back of Bucky's shoulders, steering clear of his stitches and the blistered burn mark below them. 

"Where'd you get that?" he asks. 

"Managua," Bucky says. "There used to be a SHIELD office there." 

"I bet," Steve murmurs. He presses down harder, scrubs a little at a patch of dried blood. Pink-tinted water sluices down Bucky's back and swirls into the bath. 

"Give me your hand," Steve says, eventually. He takes Bucky's flesh-and-blood hand in his own. Bucky rolls his wrist in Steve's grasp and then spreads his fingers obediently to let Steve clean his hand. Steve works slowly and thoroughly, getting the cloth in between Bucky's fingers, rubbing at the near-permanent stain of gunshot residue that's been embedded into his skin over the years. 

There's dirt ground into the pads of his fingers, and little scars and cuts from God knows what- climbing, maybe, or hand-to-hand fighting. He doesn't flinch when Steve scrubs at his hand, or when soap gets into the open cuts and scratches. Streaks of dirt disappear with each pass of the washcloth, and Steve wrings it out over the sink before wiping at the abraded skin of Bucky's wrist. It's all but healed, thanks to Zola's serum, but it still stings when Steve touches it. 

His right hand, clasped in Steve's soft fingers, is callused and faintly scarred. A white line snakes across his palm, bisecting his life line just above the base of his thumb where he must have caught a blade, wrong-handed, felt the sting of parting flesh, spilled blood-

He wonders what _they_ had made of it. 

The Winter Soldier did not make mistakes- does not make mistakes. 

Steve finishes with Bucky’s hand and drags the cloth back along his arm again, carefully wiping him clean. He looks focused, like he's studying every tendon and muscle in Bucky's arm, committing him to memory the way he lays a sketch down on paper, his face intent, his hand careful but sure. A light touch but an indelible mark. 

"Are you scared of me?" Bucky asks, and Steve squeezes the hand he's holding. 

"No," he says, meeting Bucky's gaze in a way that no one really has for - probably decades. "I'm scared _for_ you," he says. His brow furrows as he runs the cloth over Bucky's skin, covering the same ground again. His grip on the cloth is white-knuckled, but his movements are careful and controlled. 

Blood and soap trail down Bucky's arm until he's been scrubbed clean by Steve's hands. Bucky looks at his clean skin, at Steve's fingers on his arm, and smiles a little. 

Steve's eyes flick up to Bucky's face again. They're bright and blue in the dim light of the bathroom. 

"You know how I knew you?" Bucky says. He taps a metallic finger on the side of the tub. Steve's eyebrows draw together and his expression is so familiar that it tugs at Bucky's heart. He can't recall Steve looking so sad all the time, no matter how hard he tries. It must be new. 

"How?" Steve asks. 

"When you were all- all beat up and bleeding- I thought-" Bucky closes his eyes for a moment- "It was like nothing had changed, you know? I saw you like that and I guess- I'm s'posed to- to protect you. It was like we were kids again.” 

Steve tightens his fingers around Bucky's hand, and Bucky opens his eyes to look at Steve's face. 

"I know," Steve says. "And you did protect me, Buck. You did." 

He runs a thumb over the scar on Bucky's hand, back and forth, pressing in. His fingers are very soft. 

Bucky tips his head back against the bath and a ghost of a memory floats into his mind:

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, twenty-five years old, a boy, really, sitting alone in a muddy foxhole. Frost was creeping around the edges of his hole, and sparkling on the churned grass and mud outside of it, and for a moment the whole battlefield was as silent as the grave. The stuttering machine guns had stopped spitting out bullets. No mortars lit up the night sky; not even a candle flickered in the darkness.

Bucky had tipped his head back in his muddy, miserable little hole, helmet slipping, and gaped at the wide sky. He’d never seen so many stars in his life, blanketing the night sky until there was almost more light above him than darkness. Starlight glinted off of his rifle, and cast the killing fields around him in a strange half-light. The milky way, no more than a faint line of stars over the Brooklyn rooftops, had coalesced into a river of light, stretched across the night sky.

City-boy Bucky, sitting in a dark muddy trench, looked up at the stars as if he was seeing them for the first time. He had almost wished that Steve could be there with him, just to see it. 

Bucky blinks, and comes back to reality. His toes are starting to wrinkle in the water. 

"You back?" Steve asks. He's still rubbing Bucky's palm. 

"I'm back now," Bucky says. It's a lie. The boy he was, the boy Steve knew- that boy is never coming back. Steve squeezes his hand. 

"When you fell—,” Steve says, "I never... I should have gone back for you.” 

"No," Bucky says. "It was too late anyways. Your Bucky— me— _I_ was gone. Even before then." 

Steve makes a startled, hurt little sound, and then he drops Bucky's hand and reaches out to cup his face in one big hand, pulling Bucky's chin up so that he can look Bucky in the eyes. 

"Nah," Steve says, "I liked you anyways. Always." 

Steve’s smile wavers a little, and he gives Bucky an unreadable look. When he dips his face down, suddenly, and presses a kiss to Bucky's mouth, it takes them both by surprise. Bucky freezes when Steve's soft lips touch his, startled, but after a moment he lets his lips fall open and leans into Steve's hand when it comes up to cradle his face. Steve doesn't press his advantage: he just lingers, letting his lips slide over Bucky's, noses pressed together, eyes shut. Something flip-flops in Bucky's chest, and then Steve pulls back. His face is red. 

"I'm sorry," Steve says, and Bucky has to turn away from his flushed cheeks and his bright eyes. No one should be looking at him like that. 

"You don't know what I've done," Bucky says to the tiles on the wall. 

"I do," Steve says. Like it makes no difference at all. "And I still love you. Besides, you don't know what _I_ did." 

Bucky snaps his head around to glare at Steve.

"What," he says, "did you murder kids, Steve? Whatever you did, I've done worse." His eyes flick over to the knife that's still sitting beside the sink, dark against the gleaming marble. He'd cornered a man in a bathroom like this, once, slit his throat and sprayed blood across the immaculate white tiles and gleaming fixtures. 

There had been screaming, he thinks. Maybe. 

There had been _screaming_ —

"Who did _you_ kill?" Bucky asks, clenching his jaw. Steve's gaze drops to the floor. 

"Myself," he says. 

Something unexpectedly violent and angry roils up in the pit of Bucky's stomach. Steve would never have- he reaches out for Steve's face, grasps Steve's hair on an impulse he can't quite explain, tugs him in close. 

" _Why?_ " Bucky asks. 

_After all the work I put in keeping you alive-_

It's not right. It doesn't fit. And that Steve would do it because of _Bucky_ \- 

"You had- you were supposed to stay," Bucky says, and Steve pulls out of his grasp. 

"You had- didn't you have someone to stay for?" Bucky asks. He can't recall exactly, but something inside of him, bone-deep, knows that Steve should have _lived_. 

Steve is staring at the wall now, his cheeks flushed red. Bucky stares at him.

"I'm sorry," Steve says, suddenly. "I just- I-" 

He closes his eyes for a moment, fighting for composure. When he turns towards Bucky again he's wide-eyed and frightened and looking as delicate as spun glass.

" _Steve_ ,” Bucky begins, reaching for Steve's hand where it's clenched on the edge of the tub, but Steve interrupts him. Bucky tamps down on the anger and fear simmering inside of him, and lets Steve speak. 

"You know- the first time you saw me I was getting beaten all to hell by some older boys. Back of the schoolyard, nineteen-twenty five," Steve says. His mouth twists in a smile. "And you came in and saved the day. After that, you never really got rid of me. I was always following you, even when you didn't want me to. We were always together. Even when you got drafted- I was right there with you. I joined up. You remember that?"

Steve suddenly looks very young. His fingers lace through Bucky's metal ones. 

"I joined up and you were drafted," he says. "I asked for the serum- but you had it forced on you. It doesn't seem fair, Buck." He squeezes Bucky's hand. 

"And you fell," Steve says, "so I— I jumped."

Bucky blinks at the top of Steve's golden head and lets the silence between them stretch, groping for a response to Steve’s confession. Steve is still staring at the floor. 

"Jesus. Guess I shoulda let you die in '25, huh?" Bucky says. He covers Steve's hand with his flesh-and-blood hand, presses down. "Would have saved me a world of trouble," he adds, and Steve laughs a little, miserably. His hand is shaking under Bucky's fingers. 

"Yeah," Steve says, faintly. Bucky tugs his hand free and reaches out to touch Steve's chin, to tilt his head so that Bucky can see his face. Same eyes, even if the rest of him has changed- Bucky would know those eyes anywhere. Steve stares back at him solemnly, and his face is so severe that Bucky has to smile at him.

Steve's face crumples a little, mouth twisting into something that starts off as a smile and then dies horribly. He leans down and presses his forehead to Bucky's shoulder, hair tickling Bucky's neck. The weight on his shoulder feels oddly, viscerally familiar (just like the rest of Steve), and Bucky cards his fingers though the fine hairs at the base of Steve's skull. 

"We're home now," Bucky says, pressing a firm hand to Steve's neck. It's an automatic gesture, soothing and grounding, something he's done a hundred times before. 

It's muscle memory. A habit that slipped through HYDRA's claws. 

Bucky Barnes is never coming back, not really. 

But then neither is Steve Rogers. 

Steve pulls away and smiles at him, a little, and Bucky returns the smile automatically. His arm has been scrubbed pink and shining. Cool air wafts across his back, so he slides down into the warm water. 

"Front, now," Steve says, voice a little thick, and Bucky leans back, bares his neck to Steve's hands. 

"You want to shave?" Steve asks, running the washcloth over Bucky's clavicle. He stops to scrub at a dried circle of blood on Bucky's right shoulder, the only remaining reminder of a puncture wound he'd picked up a week ago (a knife, a back-alley, a lucky hit. A short fight). When the scabbed-over blood comes off the skin underneath is pink and new. 

There's a little dip just under Bucky's rib cage, an indented patch of silvery-white skin that's knotted with scar tissue. It looks as if someone had opened Bucky up and scooped out a what they had found inside, and left him to heal as best he could. Steve presses a finger against the scar, frowning. 

"That's old," Bucky says, head tipped back against the side of the bath, eyes closed. 

Steve goes back to cleaning Bucky's body, slides the cloth along Bucky's side. Bucky lifts his left arm and then his right, lets Steve lean across to scrub along his ribs and under his arms. His metal joints click softly when he moves. 

"Did we know a Jack Dempsey?" Bucky asks. The name has been rattling around in his head, and he can't attach it to a face, or even a real memory. Steve blinks at him. 

"Jack-? Oh." Steve says. "He was a boxer. In the twenties. We used to pretend to be him and Gene Tunney. He died... twenty years ago."

"Did I used to let you win?" Bucky asks, and Steve smiles again. 

"Sometimes," Steve said. "Mostly you just taught me how to throw a punch. I was never much good at it." 

Steve walks his fingers down Bucky's side, across the pale band of skin between his waist and thighs, and cups his fingers over Bucky's hips, under the water. 

"What's this?" he asks, rubbing along the line that curves over Bucky's flank. It's thin and precise, and looks surgical. Bucky's lip twitches. 

"I shattered my hip when I fell off the train," Bucky says. "Hydra replaced it when they were fixing me."

“Oh-” Steve says, a little exhale like someone’s punched him in the gut. 

Steve circles his thumb on the point of Bucky's hipbone, a little worried movement that he may not even realize he's making. He bites his lip, visibly reining in his emotions, and when he speaks his voice wavers dangerously.

"Well- I guess- just don't let Natasha know," he says. "She already gets enough mileage out of me being ninety-five." Steve smiles at Bucky and then has to duck his head again, face falling. His hand tightens on Bucky's hip.

"You used to do this for me, back in the day. Do you remember?" Steve asks. Bucky shrugs, water rippling with the movement. 

"Not sure," he says. 

"You used to bundle me into the bath, when I was sick," Steve says. "Always threatened to carry me down the hall, out where everyone could see us. I remember I puked all over you once, in '38, right after you'd gotten me cleaned up." 

He trails off, lets his hand slide from Bucky's hip to his belly. "But you had a way of helping me that- I don't know. If it had been anyone but you, I wouldn't have been able to stand it." 

"I help you with _that_ , too?" Bucky asks, and Steve notices that his hands have drifted to the band of skin above Bucky's groin, dangerously close to the black thatch of pubic hair at the base of his belly. Steve pulls them away and settles his arms carefully on the edge of the tub. 

"Sometimes," he says. "Yeah." 

Bucky sits up, water rippling, and hugs his knees to his chest, metal arm slung over flesh.

"I remember- I remember loving you," he says. " _He_ loved you, anyways." 

Bucky had loved the soft, startled sounds that Steve made in bed, the creaking whine of his voice when he lost control. Had treasured the rabbit-thump of Steve's pulse under his lips, how his long fingers had dug into Bucky's shoulders hard enough to bruise. He dreams about it, sometimes, but it feels like watching a blue film; it's something that happened to someone else. 

"I don't know if I can be him," Bucky says, voice soft. 

Steve's face falls, and Bucky reaches out again and cups his chin, feels muscles twitching and shifting under his hand. There's a tightness to Steve's face that's oddly familiar, a cussed stubbornness in the jut of his chin that Bucky has seen before somewhere. 

"Give me time," he says.

Bucky twists around to press his forehead to Steve's, and follows his words up with a chaste peck of the lips.

"You know I'd take you any way, Buck," Steve says. His voice is rough in his throat. Bucky nods, head rocking against Steve's, and unfolds his legs, dropping his hand from Steve's face to lean back against the tub.

Steve picks up Bucky's left foot, hands firm, and runs the sponge over the twitching muscles of Bucky's calf.

He lingers over a scar by Bucky's knee, a relic from the war. A fragment of shrapnel had caught Bucky in the leg, not deeply enough to lame him, but bad enough to scar. It had gotten him a ticket back to England, a little rest and respite from the front, until he was healed up and thrown back into the fray. One of his letters, written in a hospital bed in Buckinghamshire, had chased Steve down when he was running up the flag in Illinois.

There's a fainter scar beside it, an even older trophy from a game of stickball that had turned violent, on a muggy summer day in the thirties. He'd been an amiable creature back then- until you gave him a sawed-off broom handle and a spaldeen.

Then it was every man for himself, and woe betide the fool who knocked over little Stevie Rogers.

Bucky watches as Steve smiles and rubs a fingertip over the little triangle of raised skin. 

Steve's hand slips a little on Bucky's leg, suds bubbling between his fingers. He doesn't ask about the stripes on Bucky's feet; he knows enough about interrogation to know where they came from, and enough about Bucky's enhanced healing to know how long the torture must have lasted, how deep the cuts must have gone to leave scars. He cleans Bucky's feet carefully, working the washcloth in between Bucky's toes, passing it gently over the uneven soles of his feet. He presses a thumb against the scarred skin on the bottom of Bucky's left foot and watches Bucky's toes curl in reflexively. 

When Steve runs his hands up Bucky's thigh, pressing into the muscle there, Bucky's skin shifts under his fingers, turning red and white. Bucky lets his thighs fall open, so that Steve can dig deep into his muscles. His cock is dark and flaccid between his legs.

Bucky's head lolls back against the tub, muscles trembling beneath Steve's fingers, and Steve picks up his right leg. 

"Do you know what happened to your ankle?” Steve asks. Bucky shrugs, eyes closed, so Steve finishes wiping down his leg, hands brisk and thorough. When he reaches Bucky’s ankle, it’s red, and a little swollen, but the damage Bucky incurred is already halfway healed. Steve probes it delicately, but it seems to be taking care of itself. 

"What about your arm?" Steve asks. Bucky opens his eyes and then, bracing himself on the sides of the tub, turns around so that his left side is facing Steve. Steve presses the washcloth to Bucky's shoulder, watches soap suds catch and run down the grooves of Bucky's arm. Bucky puts his right hand on top of Steve's hand, and presses down. More soap slides down the metal carapace, and Bucky interlaces their fingers and guides Steve's hand over the shining length of his arm. 

Fingers had traced constellations across the freckled, sun-spotted skin of his shoulder, in another life. Steve had slept sprawled across his back when they were huddled together on the cushions on Bucky's floor, or, later, in the creaking old bed in their apartment. He feels warm breath ghosting over his shoulder blade, where he hasn't had nerve endings for half a century, and he shudders a little, shakes it off. 

"Hey, help me out here," Bucky says, and Steve blinks and tears his gaze away from the gleaming curve of Bucky's arm. 

"Doesn't your arm rust in the water?" Steve asks. Bucky shrugs. 

"Hasn't yet," he says. 

Steve presses the cloth into Bucky's palm and watches his beautifully articulated fingers close around it, soundless and precise. Bucky lets Steve touch his blunted fingertips, bend his knuckles back and forth, stroke a finger along the edge of Bucky's metal palm. He can't feel it, not really, but watching Steve's careful exploration of his hand makes pleasure surge through his brain all the same. He gives Steve a tired smile when he looks up from his study of Bucky's arm. 

"All clean?" Steve asks. The water is tepid, now, and filthy with dirt and blood. Bubbles eddy along Bucky's long, lean legs. 

"For now," Bucky says quietly. 

"Guess we should rinse, huh," Steve says. He reaches for the plug between Bucky's feet. The bath glugs once, twice, and then begins to drain. The water goes down slowly, smoothly, curling gently around Bucky's body as it goes, and every centimeter reveals more of him, bruised and battered and blemished by all the hell he's put it through. His legs are tinged pink, blood rushing to the surface under the skin from the heat of the water.

Bucky flexes his toes, lets the water tickle him as it circles the drain, carrying away all the filth that Steve had scrubbed off of his skin. 

"Do you want to try your hair again?" Steve asks. He shakes his head when he catches Bucky's dubious glance at the draining bath water. 

"Not like that," Steve says, "I have a shower." 

 


	3. Chapter 3

III. 

The shower is nestled in the corner of the bathroom, separated from the tub and sink by a sleek, delicate-looking glass partition wall, and there’s little frosted glass window set into the wall at head-height. It couldn't be further from the dank cement-lined barracks where they had hosed him down in-between missions. 

Bucky runs his metal hand over the white-tiled wall while Steve rinses out the tub. He recalls, dimly, the vivid red of arterial blood smeared across a wall just like this one, and the scrape of a metal blade on porcelain, children screaming in the tub— 

He drops his hand and the memory drops away, too. It could have happened any time in the last half-century. It doesn't bother him, and he wonders if it ever will. Wonders if Bucky Barnes would have been able to live with the things he's done. 

It should bother him, he thinks, turning the water on. It should. 

He tests the spray with his flesh hand. It's warm, and gentle, and nothing like the hose- he shudders and glances quickly at Steve, checking that he's still there. Steve, sitting on the side of the tub with a huge wet patch on his shirt, gives Bucky a little smile. Bucky takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. 

One last step: he's nearly done. Bucky edges into the water, turning his back to the tiles, and dips his head under the shower. It dances over his hair, tickling, and then sinks in, spreading warmth over his head and neck. Little rivulets stream from the ends of his hair and ring out when they bounce off the metal of his arm. 

He sounds like a goddamned tin roof in a rainstorm. 

Bucky looks down, letting warm water pound against the back of his neck, and hears Steve stand up from his perch on the tub. His clothes make little wet sounds as he crosses the room, and his bare feet appear in Bucky's line of vision. Sodden jeans crumple to the floor, and Steve steps into Bucky's space, slowly and deliberately. 

Bucky reaches out and tangles his metal hand in Steve's shirt, pulling him closer. 

"Thank you," he says, softly. 

Steve reaches up and strokes Bucky's wet hair out of his face before he presses his forehead to Bucky's. His breath is warm on Bucky's lips. They stand for a moment, Bucky's hand clenched in Steve's shirt, and stare at each other. Steve’s shirt is soaked through, slick under Bucky’s fingers.

" _Bucky_ -" Steve says. Bucky drops his hand. Steve smiles at him, and Bucky steps forward a little, angling his face away from the water, and tilts his head so that Steve can wash his hair. 

It's slow going. Bucky's hair is knotted and rough, frayed from months of neglect, from years of cold. Steve's fingers, careful as they are, get tangled and caught in the mess. Still, he persists, working shampoo into Bucky's hair, working from the bottom up. 

Bucky rests his forehead on Steve's shoulder, breathes in sweat and soap and the tea-tree tang of the shampoo. The knots slowly untangle, and the last of the dirt that had been clinging to Bucky's body slips away down the drain.

Steve combs conditioner through his hair with gentle fingers, scraping his scalp. When he tilts Bucky's head back to rinse, one hand laid across Bucky's brow to shield his eyes, it feels like a benediction. 

"I'm glad you're back," Steve says softly. He slides his fingers out of Bucky's hair and strokes them down the side of Bucky's face, his neck, his shoulders. It feels like he's sloughing off half a century of hurt and pain with each firm sweep. Steve's hands slide down Bucky’s sides, skimming past scars and bruises, and come to rest at the base of his spine. Bucky shifts against him, pressing back into the warm hands on his hips, and warmth pools in the pit of his stomach. His cocks nudges against Steve's thigh. It's no more than that, just a spark of interest, a reaction to Steve's closeness, the warmth of his body and the pressure of his hands. 

It feels, for the first time in a long time, like home. Steve's fingers drum against his skin and then dig in, easing the tension in his back. 

Maybe, just maybe, they've made it back from the war. There are no banners for them, and they're sixty-eight years late to the victory parade. But they have a little quiet, finally, and a space to be alone. 

"Can I—” Steve says, suddenly. "Can I just—”

He presses his palm to Bucky's chest, spreads out his long fingers. 

"It's been so long since I felt—” Steve says, and breaks off again. He stares at Bucky for a moment and then his eyes drop closed. His hand is firm on Bucky's chest. 

Bucky's heart pounds steadily, pulsing obediently under Steve's hand. Bucky closes his own hand over Steve's, feels his heartbeat filtered through Steve's fingers. He can feel Steve's pulse, too, and how they intermingle, incoherent at first, and then, slowly, they settle into a pattern that Bucky hadn't even realized he was missing. 

"I haven't heard this since 1945," Steve murmurs. Their fingers are still interlaced on Bucky's chest, and they linger together for a moment longer. Then Steve sighs, and drops his hand to his side. After a moment, he reaches around Bucky and turns the water off. The sudden silence rings in Bucky's ears. Steve touches Bucky's neck, just briefly, brushing over his jumping pulse point, and then he tugs a towel off of the rack on the wall and presses it into Bucky's hands. He peels off his soaked shirt and boxers, and grabs his own towel.

"I want to shave," Bucky says, wrapping the towel around his shoulders and shimmying it down his back. Steve's face is buried in his own towel, but he makes a noise of assent. 

"And cut my hair," Bucky adds. His hair is soaked, and it clings damply to his face and neck. He rubs the towel down his chest, briskly, and wraps it around his waist. 

Steve, towel secured around his narrow hips, flicks the toilet lid down so that Bucky can sit down on it. The scissors Steve used on his shirt are still sitting on the counter, and Steve uses them to cut Bucky's hair off with efficient snips. Bucky bends his head under Steve's hands, listening to the rasp of the scissors at his ear. Steve trims his hair down to a fluffy bird's-nest of dark curls, and then, after a moment's consideration, follows up the scissors with an electric clipper. The buzz of the blades is nothing like the whine-screech of electricity from the chair, but Bucky still jerks away from it, heart pounding. 

" _Стойте!_ " he says, and Steve freezes. 

"Bucky?" Steve drops down to kneel in front of him, clippers dangling in his grasp. Bucky braces his hands on his knees, kneading his towel between his fingers, and takes a deep breath. There's no plastic bit between his teeth. His head hurts, but his bones aren't exploding out of his body; there's no chair. 

No chair. Just Steve, kneeling on the damp bathroom floor, eyes dark with concern.

He looks down at Steve's face, focuses on the crooked line of his nose, mundane and familiar. He remembers gushing blood, startlingly bright and profuse, and the lumpy, shattered mess of Steve’s nose, slipping and grinding under his fingers. He remembers Steve's face creasing with pain, how his lips and his teeth had been stained with red-

Bucky reaches out to touch the little lump of cartilage on the bridge of Steve's nose, and Steve leans into Bucky's touch, his eyes sliding shut. Whoever had set his nose had done a shitty job of it. 

"Let me finish?" he says. Steve nods, still nestled into the palm of Bucky's hand. 

"I'm okay," Bucky says. He forces a smile, for Steve's benefit, and stands up. Steve's eyes open slowly, and he scrambles up from the floor, clippers still in his hands. He sets them on the sink without breaking eye contact with Bucky. 

"I can finish here," Bucky says. 

Steve gives him a strange little half-smile, a quirk of the mouth that doesn't reach his eyes, and then starts gathering up their discarded clothes. 

"I'll be outside if you need me," he says. 

 

Bucky waits until the door has closed behind Steve, and then he wipes down the fogged mirror. His face appears by degrees, disjointed images floating in a fog. Sharp eyes. The line of a neck. A frowning mouth. His chin is dusted with stubble and his hair is lopsided where Steve had been trimming it down. He stares at his reflection for moment, and then, working quickly, runs the clippers over his scalp, finishing what Steve had started. 

He sets the clippers aside and rummages through Steve's shelves until he finds shaving foam and a razor. He soaps up his skin, taking his time, and carefully drags the razor over the delicate skin of his neck, his chin, his hollow cheeks. They had done this for him, before missions. He pulls the razor away from his face, lets the tremors still, and then carefully goes back to his work. 

The smell of Steve's soap conjures up another memory, of a slip of a girl perched beside him, avidly watching his progress as he shaved. He doesn't remember her voice, or her name. 

Rebecca Barnes, maybe; Bucky had had sisters. 

He rinses his face, ignoring the sting of cold water on his skin, and buries his face in the hand towel. 

Maybe she'd been a dead little girl in a Moscow bathroom, snow scudding by her kitchen window, gas leaking from the oven. The fire had caught very quickly. 

After a moment, he takes a deep breath and drops the towel, half-dreading the face he'll find in the mirror. 

He looks- nothing like the man he used to be. He picks up the clippers and buzzes more hair off the sides of his head, clippings dusting his neck and shoulders, and steps back to assess the result. Steve had left it a little longer on top, so it tufts up in damp curls over his forehead, but it’s still severe and unfamiliar. He touches the fuzz on his head, drags a thumb over the bumps and lines Zola's experiments had left on his scalp. Bucky Barnes had never worn his hair this short. 

The sad-eyed creature in the mirror is a stranger. There are bags under his eyes, reddish-purple and bruised, and tiny crows' feet crease his temples. He's not young any more; he may have had the serum, but he doesn't have Steve's perennial youth, unsettling in its perfection. 

A sudden impulse strikes him- to take it all off, shave his head completely, like a penitent sinner. The impulse brings with it a fleeting memory of incense and camphor, of wooden beads rolling over his knuckles. 

_Bless me, Father..._ His lips shape the words soundlessly. There's no one to hear him, and he's lost his belief in God, anyways, somewhere in the ice and snow. Without that, the words are only so much air. He's not even sure it was ever his to begin with; sometimes the line between Steve and Bucky is hazy, one indistinguishable from the other in the fragmented mess of his mind. 

Bucky shakes off the sensation, and sets the clippers aside. He flicks his towel open and lets it drop to the floor, and stares at his reflection, taking himself in. 

His hand drifts up to his metal shoulder, tracing the seam where metal meets flesh. He's looked at himself before, tried to connect the body in the mirror with Bucky, or James Buchanan Barnes, or anyone at all. The man in the mirror had been so startling, so strange, so different from the man that Bucky Barnes had been, before, that he'd struggled to reconcile the idea that the two of them inhabited the same body. 

Now he's warm and safe, shorn of all the physical markers of the Asset (he touches his metal arm again, frowning), with Steve, who calls him Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, who tells him that Bucky Barnes' heart is still beating inside of his chest- he turns his head, trying to catch his profile in the mirror, and twists to look at the marks on his back. He touches himself where Steve had touched him, tries to see himself through Steve's eyes. 

Even with his hair short and his face clean-shaven, with Steve at his side, a living man again instead of a ghost- he's not Bucky. Bucky Barnes is folded away somewhere deep inside of him, maybe, and the Asset is- he squints, tries to make the creature in the mirror fall away. 

Steve says he's not- he wasn't _always_ , no- 

The museum said he was Bucky Barnes. It's a historical fact. It's _real_ ; he can't argue with the carefully curated photographs, with the black-and-white film reels. He knows exactly how unreliable memory can be, but the photographs, the medical reports, the enlistment forms under glass at the museum are mundane and honest. There's even a yellowing telegraph solemnly recording the fact of James Buchanan Barnes' passing: _THE SECRETARY OF WAR ASKS THAT I ASSURE YOU OF HIS DEEP SYMPATHY IN THE LOSS OF YOUR SON SERGEANT JAMES BARNES REPORT RECEIVED STATES HE DIED_ \-- well. There was a date recorded in faded ink, but whether it was accurate is up for debate. 

History, as it turns out, can be unreliable too. 

He rolls his shoulder, watches the metal plates ripple and resettle in the mirror. The star is a blotch of red on his shoulder, Soviet branding turned into HYDRA misdirection. 

He's had his metal arm for longer than he had a flesh one, technically. Sometimes it felt like a glove, a suit of armor covering his real arm; most of the time he didn't think about it, as long as it got the job done. It never shook, when he was looking down his rifle scope. It was strong. It didn't register pain. 

It had never been a part of Bucky Barnes. 

Bucky Barnes had had two steady hands made of flesh and blood, a shoulder for girls to nestle against, had split his knuckles to the bone protecting Steve Rogers. Had wrapped both arms around Steve on winter nights, and drifted off with Steve's heart beating against his skin, under the curve of Steve's spine. 

This- this metal thing he has now doesn't register pain, but it's equally insensible to pleasure. 

This arm. _His_ arm. 

He holds out both hands in front of him, turns them back and forth, comparing the striated lines of his right hand with the engineered joints of his left. Curls his fingers into a fist, uncurls them again. His hands open and close simultaneously, working together perfectly. 

"Bucky?" Steve taps on the door, and Bucky lets his hands drop to his sides. 

"There's clothes out here," Steve says, "when you're ready." 

Bucky exhales, a long shuddering breath, and turns away from the man in the mirror. 

When he opens the bathroom door, the light streaming into Steve's living room is nearly blinding, after the dim warmth of the bathroom. Bucky tightens the towel wrapped around his waist, and assesses the room around him. It's bright and airy, with high ceilings and windows that flood the room with sunlight. There's an empty easel in one corner, next to a stack of records, and a low table is scattered with paint tubes and brushes, bright in the afternoon light. An overstuffed couch is shoved up against one wall, with a huge flat-screen TV on the wall across from it. 

He's been here for two days now, but it doesn't feel like home. 

It's not safe- it’s too open; it's too beautiful. He usually breaks into rooms like this, to do his work, and then leaves as silently as he arrived. More often, he's seen places like this through the scope on his rifle. 

No, beautiful rooms like this have never been places for him to stay in. But there's a neat little pile of clothes at his feet, sweatpants and a worn t-shirt. His tactical glove is sitting at the top of the pile, cleaned of dirt and gore, and polished to a faint, leathery sheen. 

And Steve is curled up on the couch, looking surprisingly small for a man of his size. His hair has dried into a fluffy halo of gold, and a paperback book, cover splayed, is dangling forgotten in his hand. He's looking at Bucky fondly. 

Bucky ducks his head, avoiding Steve's gaze, and busies himself with the clothes at his feet. Bucky tugs the sweatpants over his hip and slides his hand into the glove, wiggling his fingers to check the fit. He pulls the t-shirt over his head and shrugs into it, breathing in Steve's scent, and when he looks up, Steve is still watching him. 

"It looks good," Steve says, eyeing Bucky's hair thoughtfully. Bucky scrubs a hand over his scalp. His short hair feels prickly and strange against his fingers. 

Steve pats the empty side of the sofa, and Bucky pads across room to where Steve is sitting. He settles down on the couch slowly, feels Steve shift his weight to accommodate him. Bucky curls his legs under his body, mimicking Steve's pose, and settles against the plush back of the couch. 

"You want anything?" Steve asks. Bucky shakes his head.

Steve smiles at him, warm and sweet, and picks up his discarded book. Bucky shuffles around to look over Steve's shoulder, and Steve takes his hand, almost absently, and threads their fingers together. He peers down at the poem that Steve is reading. 

_your homecoming will be my homecoming-_

_my selves go with you,only i remain;_ , the poem says. Bucky hooks his chin over Steve's shoulders, and mouths the words silently, lips moving against Steve's neck. 

_a shadow phantom effigy or seeming_  
 _(an almost someone always who’s noone)_

_a noone who,till their and your returning,_  
 _spends the forever of his loneliness_  
 _dreaming their eyes have opened to your mourning_

_feeling their stars have risen through your skies:_

By all rights they should both be dead and buried now, a matched set of decrepit bones moldering in a European field or a borough cemetery, but instead someone has seen fit to give them this- 

It's enough for now. He traces a finger along the straight line of Steve's spine, feels Steve's body rise and fall against him, breathing strong and steady. It's enough. 

_so,in how merciful love’s own name,linger_  
 _no more than selfless i can quite endure_  
 _the absence of that moment when a stranger_  
 _takes in his arms my very lifes who’s you_

_-when all fears hopes beliefs doubts disappear._  
 _Everywhere and joy’s perfect wholeness we’re. ___

**Author's Note:**

> People Without Whom This Fic Would Literally Not Exist:
> 
> greenkneehighs on tumblr, who comes first on this list because I basically liveblogged my big bang into her inbox. The whole thing. Really. And she suggested one of the more disturbing plot elements, so, you know, that too. 
> 
> [dreamofflight](http://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamofflight/pseuds/dreamofflight), an experienced and awesome writer who provided plot-hole fixes and fiddly-detail support, and who also put up with me basically liveblogging my big bang into her inbox. I don't think I talked to her about anything else for like three months. 
> 
> And the following wonderful betas/consultants/knowledgeable folks made it possible for me to write this thing: 
> 
> claro3 (russian consultant, general hand-holder)  
> electro_monk (beta/hand-holder)  
> haematurge (embarrassing sex questions consultant)  
> [imperialgrunt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Artifiction/pseuds/Artifiction) (russian translation)  
> morgan_leigh (bucky consultant)  
> okapik: russian beta  
> romaniandisaster (beta)  
> stjesusofsuburbia (agonizing wounds wrangler)  
> slyindoorssmoke (beta)  
> thunderboltsortofapenny (brainwashing consultant)  
> unbuttonedinawood (beta) 
> 
> The title is from ee cummings' poem [your homecoming will be my homecoming](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse/97/5#!/20588192)
> 
> Translations, for those who requested them:
> 
> На этот раз девять минут. Великолепно. Но недостаточно. Приведите его в порядок и продолжайте. : Nine minutes, this time. Wonderful. But not enough. Clean him up, and then continue.  
> Раз, два. Три, четыре, сожми кулак. Хорошо. Проверка моторики завершена. : One, Two. Three, four, make a fist, good. Dexterity check complete.  
> Подчинение будет- : Compliance will be-  
> Стойте! : Stop!
> 
>  


End file.
